In 1942, Eva Traube flees Paris for a mountain town near the Swiss border after the authorities arrest her father. To help Jewish children escape across the frontier to safety, she utilizes her talent for drawing to forge identity documents. Working alongside a resistance operative named Rémy, she develops a coded system within a religious text to record the true birth names of the children they assist. This record, known as the Book of Lost Names, preserves identities that the Vichy regime and the Nazis intend to erase through bureaucratic destruction and deportation.
Readers of historical fiction who track the logistical operations of the French Resistance will find a detailed look at the chemistry and artistry required for wartime forgery. It appeals to those interested in how forgotten archives connect past trauma to present-day resolution. The audience gains a technical understanding of document falsification and a perspective on how personal records function as a form of defiance against erasure. The book leaves readers with a narrative account of how quiet data preservation serves acts of survival during the Holocaust.
- Published
- 2020
- Language
- EN
